Spiritual Ahedonia - or Apathy

There's a thread about Atheism over in Purg, but I got thinking about how most of the people I know don't not attend church our of atheism, but out of lack of interest.

I have much sympathy with them these days. I'm not moved by religion. Prayer. Singing stuff. Hearing sermons. The liturgy. Any of it. I want it to be sort of true - well, some versions - I'd sooner God not exist than be the monster of Moses, Joshua, Augustine or Calvin.

So I pose - is it possible not to have the Religious Response gene (I don't necessarily mean a literal gene)? Is it possible for someone without it to nevertheless be drawn to religion, like someone who is unmoved by music but nonetheless wants to be a concert pianist? Is it fixed or changeable?

Comments

  • I think a lot of the "lack of interest" I see is at least functional atheism. I don't know whether this describes your friends, but a lot of what I see could be summed up as "I don't know whether or not God exists, but I don't need religion - it doesn't do anything for me. Coupled with the public perception of Christianity as being full of intolerant old men who can't stop talking about controlling how people have sex, or whatever else they do with their bodies, they don't find any reason to go and spend time "doing church".

  • The term ‘God-botherers’ is used by some of my extended family who have no time ( in every sense) for religion. This seems to acknowledge the existence of God as a remote being, but not one to get involved with.
  • I agree with both @KarlLB and @Leorning Cniht , or up to a point, anyhow, as I still enjoy liturgy and hymns - online these days, however, and by no means confined to this country.

    I look at the church I still refer to as Our Place, trying to keep the rumour of God alive in a deprived backstreet urban parish, and sometimes think that only a couple of dozen people - good, faithful, Christian souls, I have no doubt - will really miss it when it eventually closes.

    Whether or not anyone is drawn to religion whilst lacking the Religious Response gene, I couldn't say. There may well be some, of course, but the sort of Christianity peddled by the *intolerant old men* is unlikely to attract many others, apart from yet more intolerant old (or younger) men...
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    So I pose - is it possible not to have the Religious Response gene (I don't necessarily mean a literal gene)? Is it possible for someone without it to nevertheless be drawn to religion, like someone who is unmoved by music but nonetheless wants to be a concert pianist? Is it fixed or changeable?

    I can't find the direct quotation at the moment, but Blaise Pascal mentions this in his Pensées, and this is a paraphrase that Hitchens used on a regular basis: "...for those who are so made that they cannot believe..." [emphasis mine]. I'd couple with that the notion put forward by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr: "Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions."
  • This is a good question. My daughters have no interest in religion whatsoever. They did when they were little but kids are impressionable.

    One sometimes says she thinks there must be something in it as my brother-in-law and myself are reasonably bright and yet believe.

    Outside of churchy circles I find most people I know are either blithely indifferent or actively dismissive.
  • I don’t think I have a religious response gene. I only go to church now because I believe it to be what God wants of me, that is to join together in worship, and in service to the community, with others who love and follow Jesus.
  • If someone believes it’s true, but doesn’t have the feelings that would help impel them toward actions of religious devotion, couldn’t they could still try to do their best? They might be showing more effort of the will than someone whose emotions naturally push them in that direction.
  • Ditto what @Raptor Eye said.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    edited September 2024
    I seem to have the gene but lack the personal faith. I used to do the theology and got very wrapped up in it all. But then a penny dropped and I saw it as a closed self-referential system and faith evaporated.
    But I love the parish community I belong to and I admire the way so many members are active in the community on green issues, helping the poor etc. All driven by the gospel. And I love the Liturgy for its beauty and balance. And I love the music I make there.
    My apathy involves not really being that bothered that I believe almost nothing that we celebrate on Sunday mornings. What will be will be.
  • Amongst the reasons I left the Anglican Church of Canada was the boring conservative, sexist, gender exclusive language used in services and the repetitive use of tired, cliched hymns and praise songs. ( I had served 5 years as a warden prior to leaving the parish.)
  • I think this can happen in whatever Christian tradition or Tradition we adhere to.

    The Desert Fathers (and Mothers?) noted this. Was it 'acedie' they called it?

    I have no idea what the answer is to this one. It can happen to each and everyone of us. I get what @ChastMastr says about acts of the will rather than being led by emotions.

    That's another ascetic Desert Fathers and Patristic thing.
  • I continue to be concerned with the fundamental questions, but I have no interest in religion as organization, ritual, or group identity. I have my personal practices, but I don't care to wear a label or identify as a member of anything.
  • Hmmm ... The Church of One?

    I don't mean to be flippant but I am raising a serious point ( I think).

    Even if we aren't involved in religion in terms of ritual, organisation or group identity, our understanding and 'take' on the 'fundamental questions' are inevitably going to be influenced by whichever religious tradition we've been a part of or have imbibed in the past.
  • Oh, of course. And my Quaker upbringing is certainly part of this--including a profound skepticism about ritual, the very idea of religious professionals or spiritual experts, and authority.
  • Puzzler wrote: »
    The term ‘God-botherers’ is used by some of my extended family who have no time ( in every sense) for religion. This seems to acknowledge the existence of God as a remote being, but not one to get involved with.
    The expression puzzles me. Is God bothered by people who have chosen to follow him ?
  • @Telford, it's a colloquial saying that simply means that earnest believers are 'bothering' God all the time, presumably by their constant prayers, hymns and praises and fixation on religious matters to the virtual exclusion of anything and everything else.

    It doesn't literally mean that God is 'bothered' or irritated by this.

    To 'bother' someone in some forms of slang or colloquial parlance means to continually harp on at them or seek their attention.

    It's a bit like saying that a dog 'worries' away at a bone. It doesn't mean that the dog suffers anxiety simply that the dog won't leave the bone alone.

    @Timothy the Obscure of course and much as I love the Quakers in their case they replace all those things you mention with their own personal equivalents...

    Such as making a ritual out of not having ritual, or not having religious professionals, experts or authority but investing all that in their own committee structures or personal opinions 😉.

    Ok, I'm teasing to some extent.

    I knew a vicar once who was challenged quite aggressively by an earnest young Friend on a train. The Quaker was incensed at the sight of his dog-collar, learned forward and launched into an almost 17th century sounding diatribe about how he clearly lorded it over his parishioners to the extent that they could not think for themselves but hung on his every word and pronouncement and obeyed his every whim.

    'How I wish that were the case,' the vicar drily replied.
  • I hasten to add that I greatly admire how Friends conduct their decision making processes and weigh and evaluate things.

    Everyone I've come across who has had dealings with them says the same.
  • peasepease Tech Admin
    @Telford, it's a colloquial saying that simply means that earnest believers are 'bothering' God all the time, presumably by their constant prayers, hymns and praises and fixation on religious matters to the virtual exclusion of anything and everything else.
    God-botherer is a more usually a pejorative term for an over-zealous Christian who bothers the people with whom they come into contact by persistently promoting their beliefs *about* God.
  • For my wife and I, our congregation is our extended family. Most of our friends are members of the same congregation. Of our four kids, two are very active in their congregation, two do not go very often.
  • To some extent it arises from my own inability to fully feel part of something larger than myself--I have some glimmering sense of that from others' descriptions, but the emotional experience of belonging and solidarity is beyond me. I'm not proud of it--it's probably a character defect, and I have some idea about where it comes from--but there it is. I suppose at this point I consider myself culturally Quaker, but with no sense of attachment to a "religion." I just look for truth wherever I find it.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited September 2024
    To some extent it arises from my own inability to fully feel part of something larger than myself--I have some glimmering sense of that from others' descriptions, but the emotional experience of belonging and solidarity is beyond me.

    I'm the same. It's perhaps why I don't "get" sports fandom either. I'm not a member of Chesterfield Football Club so why would I feel in any way "part" of their wins and losses?

    At church I always feel like an individual adjacent to a body which everyone else seems to actually be part of.

    The only sense of "attachment" I feel to the CofE is familiarity. I used to feel I was relatively safe from religious batshittery there but all the local CofE churches here bar one are firmly in the institutional theological sexism camp so that didn't work out.

    For me I think I know exactly where it comes from.

  • It’s not a failing to feel as if we are alone and not one of the included.

    The Enneagram helped me to learn more about who I am, and that my outlook is as valuable as everyone else’s, but we all see things from a different perspective.
  • I stopped feeling "membership," for lack of a better word when I started serving on a church staff as a college student. As part of the paid staff I gained a sense that I was more helping others find/access their thing than being included in said thing myself. Twenty-four years on (and counting), and as part of a staff in a denomination I'd never consider joining, that remains even more true. I'm just The Help.
  • I look at the church I still refer to as Our Place, trying to keep the rumour of God alive in a deprived backstreet urban parish, and sometimes think that only a couple of dozen people - good, faithful, Christian souls, I have no doubt - will really miss it when it eventually closes.

    I would not be so sure. Not St Jude of the Back Streets this time but the former parish church for the area. It closed over a decade ago now. However, a couple of years after it closed I participated in a working party to try and tidy up the grounds. This was before the CofE sold the property and was done by the local Christian's together. The number of people who came by and asked when the church would be re-openning was surprising. There are people want a church in their neighbourhood even if they never darken its doors, pay for the upkeep or believe in God. I think it is probably a status symbol of being a community along with the GP surgery, local school, Post Office and general store.

  • Jengie Jon wrote: »
    I look at the church I still refer to as Our Place, trying to keep the rumour of God alive in a deprived backstreet urban parish, and sometimes think that only a couple of dozen people - good, faithful, Christian souls, I have no doubt - will really miss it when it eventually closes.

    I would not be so sure. Not St Jude of the Back Streets this time but the former parish church for the area. It closed over a decade ago now. However, a couple of years after it closed I participated in a working party to try and tidy up the grounds. This was before the CofE sold the property and was done by the local Christian's together. The number of people who came by and asked when the church would be re-openning was surprising. There are people want a church in their neighbourhood even if they never darken its doors, pay for the upkeep or believe in God. I think it is probably a status symbol of being a community along with the GP surgery, local school, Post Office and general store.

    I think there is more to it than that. People have historical connections to their parish church - baptisms, weddings, funerals, ancestors in the graveyard yes, but they also know that there is a peaceful, sacred place where they can go for spiritual refreshment and prayer, as long as the doors are open.

    As a tangent, I don’t know why the C of E have a right to sell the buildings, as they surely belong to the communities they are in.
  • Raptor Eye wrote: »
    Jengie Jon wrote: »
    I look at the church I still refer to as Our Place, trying to keep the rumour of God alive in a deprived backstreet urban parish, and sometimes think that only a couple of dozen people - good, faithful, Christian souls, I have no doubt - will really miss it when it eventually closes.

    I would not be so sure. Not St Jude of the Back Streets this time but the former parish church for the area. It closed over a decade ago now. However, a couple of years after it closed I participated in a working party to try and tidy up the grounds. This was before the CofE sold the property and was done by the local Christian's together. The number of people who came by and asked when the church would be re-openning was surprising. There are people want a church in their neighbourhood even if they never darken its doors, pay for the upkeep or believe in God. I think it is probably a status symbol of being a community along with the GP surgery, local school, Post Office and general store.

    I think there is more to it than that. People have historical connections to their parish church - baptisms, weddings, funerals, ancestors in the graveyard yes, but they also know that there is a peaceful, sacred place where they can go for spiritual refreshment and prayer, as long as the doors are open.

    As a tangent, I don’t know why the C of E have a right to sell the buildings, as they surely belong to the communities they are in.

    I agree. I am a member of a FB page devoted to the lovely historical town where I grew up. Sometimes there are pictures of the main town church, also lovely and historical (John Knox preached there) but also expensive and difficult to maintain. Each time it is pictured there is a flood of fond comments about christenings, weddings, even funerals. When there was thought it might need to close there was outrage. And because the congregation works hard to keep it lovely and keep it open and available, not just on a Sunday, it is a place where people drop in - no one person very often, maybe, but several from time to time. People want it, they want to know it is there, and while it is their memories are safe, and, maybe deep down, they have a feeling that there is something dependable in a changeful world.
  • Granted, I may well have been unduly pessimistic - but the church concerned is neither old, nor beautiful, and has no burials in its grounds (apart from some cremated remains interred within the last few years).

    The parish has suffered immense demographic change, and the older inhabitants who might have fond memories of rites of passage have long since died or moved away. The small congregation is mostly made up of people who are only in the area for a short time, but who nevertheless appreciate a sort of *eucharistic pit-stop* whilst they are around.

    The neighbours are only concerned about where to park their cars (often on the church's half-dozen off-street places), or about certain trees which dare to drop their leaves on the said cars. One of the locals once informed me that *all you Christians are f****** hypocrites*, so no doubt he'd be glad to see the place boarded up and (probably) vandalised.

    The faithful few try their best to engage with the community, such as it is, but the building is far too large for purpose. It might help if the PCC ever made the effort to make it more user-friendly - there are no disabled-access WCs, either in the church or in the Hall, and there are far too many steps without handrails - but such improvements would cost rather a lot of £££...

  • I have a cunning plan @Bishops Finger - if the National Grid rented all church roofs as solar panel farms, that would give the churches enough revenue to look after the buildings and keep them open, and they could get their power for free to boot!

    Then there would always be that peaceful sanctuary for people to go to when in need of spiritual refreshment - if they are drawn to do so. I do think many people are spiritually searching, even while rejecting religion.
  • All works for me @Raptor Eye . I also think, looking around elsewhere on this august vessel at present, that the church is at least as good at alienating people as it is at connecting with them. Sometimes, only the silence of an empty church speaks words which bind people together. AKA re-ligere. The irony. Such poor taste it might almost be divinely inspired.
  • Good idea @Raptor Eye - the PCC did think about solar panels a few years ago (the church has a vast expanse of south-facing roof!), but nothing was done. Maybe the technology has advanced to the point where, once again, it should be considered?
  • I’m with you there, @ThunderBunk

    @Bishops Finger it is usually out of reach of a church’s finances, and with planning permission and building controls etc and with ongoing maintenance I reckon it’s too daunting for many to venture with - and as it can only really be used for direct on the spot electricity (unless there were vast banks of batteries) I don’t think it could be effectively used for heating so it wouldn’t be cost effective.

    But the National Grid might be able to cut across all of that, generating vast amounts of electricity for the grid and paying the churches for use of their roofs, with on the spot electricity an extra benefit.
  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited September 2024
    Yes, I see what you mean. An interesting thought.

    The £££ raised could be usefully employed in making the church usable independently of the hall (rented to a nursery school every weekday), with disabled-access WC and modest kitchen/servery facilities within the nave.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    At church I always feel like an individual adjacent to a body which everyone else seems to actually be part of.

    I usually if not always feel that way about most things, including humanity. I trust that someday that will be healed.
    For me I think I know exactly where it comes from.

    I think I do as well in my case.

    Prayers for you, prayers welcome for me.
  • Yes, I see what you mean. An interesting thought.

    The £££ raised could be usefully employed in making the church usable independently of the hall (rented to a nursery school every weekday), with disabled-access WC and modest kitchen/servery facilities within the nave.

    Indeed - we can only begin to imagine the potential benefits to everyone!

  • Bishops FingerBishops Finger Shipmate
    edited October 2024
    Raptor Eye wrote: »
    Yes, I see what you mean. An interesting thought.

    The £££ raised could be usefully employed in making the church usable independently of the hall (rented to a nursery school every weekday), with disabled-access WC and modest kitchen/servery facilities within the nave.

    Indeed - we can only begin to imagine the potential benefits to everyone!

    Yes. The church would remain available to those few who really do want a *sacred space* (and FatherInCharge holds a daily Mass...), but, at the same time, could be used by other groups - not necessarily religious ones!

    These are the End Times, I suspect, so there may well be more and more people needing or seeking some sort of solace, not always to be found in formal theology, liturgies or services. Churches are good places for this, at least sometimes.
  • I once worked for a Priest who left us for a position at at storied Church in the heart of New York City's Financial District. An early effort of his to increase revenue there was to allow a large company to hang a huge banner from one of the church buildings. For this the company paid a healthy monthly sum in the teens of thousands of dollars (teens not tens). If memory serves, this was not entirely legal, and so the church began to incur fines from the City, I think. Anyway, the fines were so small comapared to the monthly advertising income that he just kept doing it. I don't remember how long that went on! Months and months at least.
  • :lol:

    A bit naughty, maybe, but worth it for the $$$...

    Some churches in the UK have found a source of revenue by allowing mobile-phone masts to be attached to their towers, although I think proper planning permission has to be obtained for this.

    It all helps!
  • He wasn't one to worry about ruffling anyone's feathers.
  • 🙇‍♂️
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